Two days of work, and my God, if I wouldn't have finished it today (meaning 4.24 a.m.) I would've thrown this painting away for a very very long time

Why Krush Warrior, you may ask. First of all the Krush Warrior is supposed to, well... crush. Secondly, that's what he likes to do... and as you can imagine this mighty fellow destroys his opponents by squashing them with a rather big and heavy axe, sucker punching them or headbutting those unfortunate enough to stand in his way.

No refs used. Hope you like it, 'cause I certainly do and had a lot of fun painting it

Yes, I do use Photoshop nowadays, although when I started out I found myself highly annoyed by its unintuitive way of mixing colours. What also bugged me was the pressure sensitivity... which is not that good. I suggest trying Corel Painter as it is 10 times better than Photoshop in regards to the matters above and it should help you start out. Oh, just a word of caution... save! A lot. Painter crashes very frequently. I haven't found any solution to the problem and neither have others, so that's something you either have to cope with or not, depending on whether you like the software enough to say "oh, balls to it. I don't mind".

Bringing traditional art into Photoshop or similar is common even nowadays when most traditional artist find themselves transitioning towards digital mediums. I haven't been trained in traditional art or anything so I cannot provide you with any advice in regards to that.

Have you been drawing/painting traditionally? If not, prayers to you. It's a long, long way getting close to anywhere you'll feel yourself satisfied.

Let me know if there's any training you've had so far. I will then send you a couple of links to tutorials, forums and whatnot so you can get going.

I draw outside of photoshop without a problem. I feel like i need to improve, but i need to get my motivation back for it all. I'm actually in college for graphic design, but thats not saying much, your ten times more talented then half of my professors. (As far as me comparing yours and their work)

Other then what i've said, i don't know how to describe my training. Everything is self taught.

I guess you've tried Painter by now. How did it feel compared to Photoshop, for example? There's a couple more drawing and painting software that you may want to try and see if they suit you better. Look for ArtRage and Paint Tool Sai, both wonderful little programs. They're more oriented towards helping you do line art, manga and anime, but they've a unique feeling to them so I really suggest you try them out.